Hacker group Anonymous claimed late Monday that the
source code of Symantec's pcAnywhere had been uploaded
on The Pirate Bay site, after Symantec failed to pay
them $50,000 in return for the stolen code.

Symantec is currently checking whether the released
source code is actually real.

Earlier on Monday, an email string posted on Pastebin
referred to negotiations over payment for the source
code between one Sam Thomas, purported to be a
Symantec employee, and a person named Yamatough. The
name of the hacker is similar to the Twitter handle of
YamaTough in Mumbai who is associated with the hacker
group, Lords of Dharmaraja, that had earlier claimed
it had access to the source code of some Symantec
products. Symantec said that the person responding to
the hacker's emails was not its employee but an
undisclosed law enforcement agency.

"We can't pay you $50,000 at once for the reasons we
discussed previously," said one email from a purported
Symantec employee Sam Thomas, who offered to pay the
full amount at a later date.

"In exchange, you will make a public statement on
behalf of your group that you lied about the hack."

The hacker said he never intended to take the money
and warned he would soon release the blueprints for
Symantec's pcAnywhere and Norton antivirus products.

Last month, Symantec said the version of
the source code in the hacker's possession from 2006
no longer posed a threat to its customers even if the
full blueprint to the software is released. However,
after the hack was made public in January, Symantec asked its
customers to temporarily disable pcAnywhere. It later declared it
safe to use after offering free upgrades.